Columbine - the book

I just finished the book "Columbine" by Dave Cullen. It's been out for a while, got rave reviews, and I'm partial to non-fiction. But...the Columbine massacre was such a pernicious event, so horrible, that I wondered why anyone would want to read about it. But my curiosity about the accolades this book received won out and I finally picked it up at Barnes and Noble, paperback, and got swept up by the author's superb writing.

After finishing, I tried to figure out why I appreciated the author's work so much and found the answer in an astute comment by the Charlotte Observer (in the review excerpts in the first few pages): "It opens with a proclamation of love and concludes with an image of redemption, and what unfolds in the pages between them is extraordinary...A remarkable achievement...Cullen has brought illumination to a dark and difficult topic, and the result is an example of literary nonfiction at its finest: masterful, clear-eyed, bold--and unforgettable."